* * Roger O’Quinn engineered mining equipment

There are no occupations I find more intriguing than coal mining. The industry has a long history throughout southwest Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and most of West Virginia. Roger O’Quinn of Blacksburg is a retired engineer, having spent much of his life designing mining equipment.

Roger grew up surrounded by miners. “My house was in Buchanan County, near Haysi, but you could see the Dickenson County sign from my front yard.” Aptitude tests pointed him towards engineering, where he earned a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Virginia Tech, just like me!

He worked for several different companies, but often not leaving his same desk, as employers through mergers and acquisitions frequently changed. He spent much of his time working on massive earth-gobbling machines called continuous miners. He brought a photo to our conversation.

The business end of the machine has a horizontal drum, perhaps 10-feet wide and three feet in diameter, festooned with sockets where carbide tipped “teeth” are implanted, perhaps 100 overall. The drum rotates, powered by two 250-hp motors, clawing coal from the seam. A hose carries water that is sprayed continuously to keep the dust at a minimum. Below is a tray that looks like a dust-pan, equipped with starfish-like paddles that move the coal towards a conveyer that carries it to the aft of the machine. From there, it is loaded onto carts where it is carried to the loading end of a long, rubber-belt conveyer to the exterior of the mine. Many continuous miners use 1000 Volt motors, and may consume thousands of dollars of electricity monthly.

The continuous miner is operated by a remote, radio-controlled panel that the operator carries with him. “The reason for that is to allow him some distance from the noise, water spray, and airborne particulate that the cutting generates and so he can stay under supported roof when the miner advances past the roof bolts.”

Roger said his father and uncle worked in the mine. “I’m a big guy,” he admitted, “about 6-feet 3-inches. Dad was a little under 6-feet, but he was working in mines 30 to 40-inches tall. So he’d work for hours, either walking stooped over, duck-walking, or crawling. I didn’t work in the mines myself, but I visited the mines often.

“People often don’t understand how technical coal mining is these days. They envision dirty old guys carrying picks and shovels. It’s not like that any more. The equipment is complex and sophisticated. The guys need lots of education and technical training, in addition to training in safety. Obviously, nobody wants to get hurt. For the mining companies, they want workers to be safe, but it’s more than altruistic. When somebody gets killed, the regulators shut down the mine to do their investigations. So there is no production.”

Roger was well aware of the controversies these days over the burning of coal, and recognized that someday it will need to be superseded by other energy sources. “I like my house to be heated in the winter and cooled in the summer. I like having my computer and television. These things require electricity. I read a study recently where an engineer calculated how many new nuclear plants, new windmills, square-feet of solar panels, and the like, would need to be deployed to replace the coal generation we have now. It’s enormous.”

We talked about global warming as well and the impact of coal mining on atmospheric carbon generation. “Here in the United States, our power plants have done a good job of reducing the particulate and sulfur oxide emission. We’ve done less well at controlling mercury emission. And of course carbon emission is contributing to global warming. But China is consuming six times the coal we are, and we’re second place. Their plants are much dirtier than ours. I’ve been to China. When I was in Beijing, I never saw the sun. It was completely blocked by atmospheric pollution. I only saw the sun when I went to the countryside. And China is building several new plants every week. I’m glad here in the States we have more restrictions on pollution.”

In spite of China’s rapid growth, Americans consume almost seven times as much electricity per person as China. India is also rapidly emerging as a consumer of coal. And we talked about many other issues associated with coal mining, delivery, use, and disposal, including the recent uptick in new cases of Black Lung disease, coal ash storage, gob (liquid waste material, including clay, shale, and other non-burnable materials) storage and remediation.

“Coal has a lot of problems,” Roger admitted, “but it isn’t going away soon. People should know of the enormous contribution coal has made to our economy and lifestyle. The benefits have outweighed the downsides.”